■/5 




j^mertcan Loyalty 

An Address Delivered in the Old 
South Church, Boston, Massachusetts, at 
the Morning Service, March i8, 191 7 
by the Rev. George A. Gordon, D.D. 



Printed for the Standing Committee 
of the Old South Society by the 
Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
Copyright, 1917, by the Old South Society 






NOTE 

HPHIS address was delivered at the morning service of 
-■- The Old South Church, March 18, 1917, when 
there was displayed the flag presented by members of 
the Church for permanent use in the auditorium. 

A plate to be affixed to the flag-staff will bear an in- 
scription embodying the facts recorded in the following 
statement, which appeared upon the Order of Service 
for the day: 

THE NATIONAL FLAG DISPLAYED THIS DAY IS PRESENTED TO 
THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH BY SEVERAL OF ITS MEMBERS WHO 
SERVED THEIR COUNTRY IN THE WAR FOR THE PRESERVATION 
OF THE UNION, IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH, THE FORTY-THIRD — OF 
WHICH THE FIFTEENTH MINISTER OF THIS CHURCH, JACOB 
MERRILL MANNING, WAS CHAPLAIN — THE FORTY-FOURTH AND 
THE FORTY-FIFTH REGIMENTS OF MASSACHUSETTS VOLUN- 
TEERS. IT IS PRESENTED IN HAPPY MEMORY OF THEIR COM- 
RADES, LIVING AND DEAD; IN EVER DEEPENING LOYALTY TO 
THEIR BELOVED COUNTRY; IN THE SURE FAITH THAT THE OLD 
SOUTH CHURCH WILL CONTINUE TO BE WHAT IT HAS EVER 
BEEN, A PROPHET OF THE INTEGRITY AND FREEDOM OF THE 
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



/ 

m 28 1917 



'GI.A457666 



American Loyalty 



For where thy treasure is there will thy heart he also. 

MATT. VI : 21. 

WHEN we think of the many races that 
go to make the one hundred milhon 
Americans of today, what assurances 
have we of their loyalty to this new country 
in times of international crisis? Here are men 
from every nation under heaven. Is there any 
outpouring upon them of high power, any 
descent of patriotic fire, any fresh conscious- 
ness of the Holy Spirit of political freedom 
and hope, mighty enough to bind these races 
into one vast brotherhood of loyal and proud 
Americans .^^ 

We must confess, at the outset, to the pres- 
ence of two serious disadvantages. The first 
is the absence of homogeneousness. Homo- 
geneousness is a mighty factor in national 
unity. Where the people are of one stock, 
where they are from centre to circumference 
kith and kin, there, in all times of crisis, national 
feeling is wont to go with the universal move- 
ment and strength of the tide. No part of 
the nation has power to go the other way; it 
is all one, and it runs to the flood as by the will 
of the Infinite. This wonder of homogeneous 
strength we do not possess; this initial, natural, 
inevitable loyalty is not ours. 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

Nor have we Americans the instinct of loyalty 
to our country born of history. Whether we 
know it or nor, the voices of history sing in 
the soul of a nation, and charm it into unity, 
both when the song is a dirge and a paeon. 
In the fibre of our flesh, in blood and brain 
there are stored the subtlest memories, the 
most potent susceptibiHties. Men are largely 
the resultant of racial experiences in the 
historic environment in which their ancestors 
have lived. They are born with instinctive 
loves for nature as she appears in a particular 
country. Even the universal features of na- 
ture, sunrise and sunset, the morning and 
evening stars, take on new beauty and splen- 
dor because they shine through the dear heavens 
that bend above the beloved land. For these 
peoples nature is bathed and transfigured in 
the most moving human associations; it is 
never beheld except through the eyes of racial 
achievement, suffering, love and tears. Nature 
becomes a country whose homes are founded 
and whose cradles are rocked upon a land of 
hollowed graves. Loyalty here rises as by 
the force of gravity, it is pushed upward by the 
unseen might of immemorial generations, it 
calls aloud in the strength of great instincts; 
it can be undone only by the wreck of all social 
order that comes from the sway of the tyrant. 
This vast assurance of unity and loyalty we 
possess only in a minority of our people, and it 
would be folly to underestimate our poverty 
here. 

We must seek for assurances of the loyalty 
of Americans, of all races, in other spheres of 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

human nature: in immediate experience of 
good, in the strength of reason, in the magic 
of just imagination, and in the sense of obhga- 
tion to the future. These fountains of loyalty 
will be found, I am persuaded, abundant and 
perennial. 

1. I name immediate experience of benefit 
as the fu-st universal assurance of American 
loyalty. This does not hold for adventurers, 
shirks or humbugs. We discount them. We 
affirm that for the healthy, the industrious, the 
enterprising and the earnest of all races it is 
good to be here. Work is surer here than 
elsewhere for the man willing to work, wages 
are higher, food is more abundant and of finer 
quality, the conditions of life are more whole- 
some, the chances to rise in the grade of one's 
work are better; while the opportunties for 
personal improvement by education, and the 
sympathy of good men with aspiring youth are 
in America simply incomparable. 

When the children are made part of this 
experience the assurance of loyalty becomes 
much stronger. The children go to the public 
schools; they read the history of the Revolu- 
tion; they take pride in it as their own, and 
sometimes they ask, as an Englishman's boy 
did, after reading a description of the battle 
of Bunker Hill, "Father, be you an EngKsh- 
man.^" ''Yes, my boy," was the reply. "Then 
we hcked you." When the poor immigrant 
finds it possible to send his gifted boys and girls 
to college; when he sees them treated with 
respect; when he sees them graduate, as is 
often the case, among the first scholars of their 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

class; when he further sees them thus equipped 
entering hfe with alluring prospects of success, 
he is, as I have found, in many instances, 
bowed down with a sense of gratitude to the 
country in which this experience of good is 
possible. Thousands of humble parents, in 
in the last twenty years, have gone on com- 
mencement day to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, 
all the greater colleges and universities of the 
country, to witness the triumph of their sons 
and daughters, to give expression to their 
pride and joy, and to confess grateful allegiance 
to the institutions of learning that have thus 
taught, inspired, wrought into worth and power 
the lives of those dearest to them. Here is a 
shuttle flying without ceasing in the High 
Schools and Colleges of the land, threaded with 
the sense of benefit, on the loom of unrestricted 
opportunity, weaving the robe, in royal purple 
and gold, of American loyalty. 

There is another immediate experience of good 
that issues in loyal love for this country. Im- 
migrants leave behind them needy kinsmen, 
parents, sisters and others of remoter relation- 
ship. The true-hearted, who in this new land 
do not forget the old, who in founding families 
here remember with tender and devout affec- 
tion the home circles in which their life began, 
are able to send generous help to those in dis- 
tress. They are able to do this without the 
sense of hardship; they are able to do what they 
could not have done had they never come 
hither. From the surplus of wages earned in 
this richer land, they enjoy the privilege denied 
them before, the privilege of making the existence 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

of their needy kindred in the old home less of 
a burden, more of a happiness. Picture this 
privilege when it concerns a beloved mother. 
Look at her in age, infirmity and want; think 
of the good she has done, the sons and daughters 
that she has given to the world. Imagine her 
life of toil, anxiety, tenderness and tears; life 
has taken at each stage all that she had to give; 
it has taken at last her strength of body and 
her vigor of heart. Others of her children are 
themselves so burdened that they can hardly 
come to her rescue. Several of them have come 
here; they have prospered, and they are able 
to turn the stormy afternoon of their mother's 
life into sunshine, and the evening into peace. 
The cottage of many an aged mother is made 
comfortable and cheery by day, and hghts are 
made to twinkle brightly from its windows in 
the oncoming night, because of the constant 
and generous devotion of sons and daughters in 
America. When the end has come, and the 
beloved dead is laid to rest in the ancient 
church-yard, and the memorial stone is set in 
dear remembrance to guard the sacred spot, 
the sense of the privilege freely bestowed by 
America, to utter the feelings of veneration in 
acts of veneration, rises into a kind of religious 
homage to this beneficent land. 

When the three disciples of Jesus who were 
selected to share the transcendent vision of 
their Master's transfiguration were under the 
wonder of this privilege, one of them cried out, 
Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us 
build three tabernacles, one for thee, one for 
Moses and one for Elijah. The immediate ex- 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

perience of good, rare and exalted good, good 
that is good for the entire circle of kindred 
lives, good that is good for the worthy who have 
spent their strength in love and service, good 
for age, leaning on its staff and in want, issues 
forever in the passionate desire to build a 
permanent grateful abode there. Our country 
has given us these immediate experiences of 
good, therefore we love it, with a grateful and 
loyal devotion. 

2. There is next the work of reason. Re- 
flection upon hfe here, in contrast to Hfe in the 
old country, issues in a fresh experience of good. 
The first feehng of the immigrant is apt to 
be a perverse sentiment. Everything in the 
old country stands transfigured. This is part 
of life, and is both good and evfl. 

''Care and trial seem at last 
Through memory s sunset air, 
Like mountain ranges overpast, 
In purple distance fair.'' 

The new American has to wage a battle with 
this perverse feeling, which is not a pure recol- 
lection but often a pure hallucination. Every- 
thing in the old country is at first glorified, 
everything in the new is at first belittled, if 
not bitterly reproached. America, it was hoped, 
would prove itself to be Paradise; instead it is 
a land where thorns and thistles grow, where 
men eat their bread in the sweat of their brow. 
It thus appears as a sullen and ugly disappoint- 
ment; the old country, glowing in the rosy 
light of the far-away sunrise, in spite of the 
years of trouble and sorrow, is now felt to be 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

Paradise, and it has been left behind and 
abandoned for this! While this perverse feel- 
ing continues, this wild juggler with truth, 
this necromancer who paints old sorrows in 
heavenly colors, who darkens angel faces with 
the dye of fiends, there is no hope for reasonable 
comparison and reconcihation. 

Homesickness is a fearful malady, but it is 
not incurable. It is a self-hmiting disease, 
and if the patient does not die, time will prove 
the great effective physician, as in other human 
afflictions, so in this. Homesickness resem- 
bles a certain extreme alcoholic disturbance; 
it fills the palatial dwelKng where it is with 
vipers and demons; it transforms the squahd 
hut where it is not, where it longs to be, into 
a place of celestial freedom and peace. Intoxi- 
cation at its worst, if the patient is isolated 
long enough, comes at length to soberness; 
homesickness, however long it may run riot, 
eventually gives way to sound sense and calm 
judgment. Then it is that a new epoch arrives 
in the life of the American immigrant. Reason 
emerges, calls for the plain facts, sets the old 
and the new in fair comparison, and upon due 
dehberation goes forward to a just conclusion. 

Friends are as numerous here as in the old 
country, employers are more just and consider- 
ate, men are rated, in this land as nowhere 
else, on their merit, worth is surer of recognition, 
capacity of promotion, energy of success; be- 
sides, there is a surrounding atmosphere of 
sympathy with pluck, daring, devotion to one's 
task and faith in one's ideals. Here the balance 
of goods is clearly in favor of the new country. 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

Through a reasonable mind the immigrant is 
winning a new love for America. 

In the old world society, as a general thing, 
is still deeply influenced by the feehng of caste. 
There is the King, there is the royal household; 
there is the duke, the marquis, the earl, the vis- 
count, the baron, and the poor first rung of the 
aristocratic ladder, the Sir somebody. It is 
true that the feudalistic order of society has 
received many hard knocks; it is true that a 
milhon voices roll into all sorts of aristocratic 
ears the great plea of Burns for essential man- 
hood: 

"A prince can make a belted knight, 

A marquis, duke, and a' that: 
But an honest mans aboon his might, 

Guid faith he maunna fa' that! 
For a' that, and a' that. 

Their dignities, an a' that. 
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, 

Are higher rank than a' that,'' 

Still, in the most democratic countries of 
Europe these words are more or less of a defiant 
protest against a dominant adverse order; 
while here they utter with trumpet tones, and 
amid universal approval the prevaihng social 
sentiment. The exceptions, in the person of 
the snob, the plutocrat, and other abnormal 
Americans, men and women, are after all purely 
incidental and completely insignificant. The 
atmosphere is, broadly speaking, wholly favor- 
able to the recognition of noble character as 
everywhere the supreme thing in American 
society. Thus as the American immigrant pon- 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

ders this new phenomenon, it commends itself 
to his reason; the longer he considers it, the 
surer he is that here is one of the best and most 
hopeful things in the world. 

The next step is plain. Here in the dignity 
of toil, in the doctrine that usefulness to society 
is always a badge of honor; here in expansive 
social freedom, in the equality of honest man 
with honest man; here in the pubhc contempt 
for idleness and wealth devoted to mere display 
and lust; here in the aboriginal American idea 
of the intrinsic worth of nothing but manhood 
and womanhood, is the greatest chance on 
earth for the free and unrestricted development 
of the best forces in our nature, — diligence, 
skill, conscientiousness, self-respect, in one great 
phrase, the humanity of man. Here we are 
not serfs, we are no man's tools; we are not 
machines or drudges, we are citizens of the 
United States of America. We cannot be 
ruled without our consent. Our rulers repre- 
sent us; they are accountable to us; our 
relation to them is not that of subjects to a 
sovereign, but that of a sovereign to his re- 
sponsible servants. 

Slowly the economic, the social and the polit- 
ical advantages here rise into the heart of the 
American immigrant through his understanding. 
America means for him, as he reflects upon its 
structure, a new world. Therefore with the 
consent of his whole mind he comes to identify 
his existence and fate with the existence and 
fate of the American RepubKc. 

3. The loyalty of all true Americans is great- 
ened by the power of a just imagination. Imag- 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

ination is the telescope of the mind; it makes 
visible blazing realities that otherwise would 
remain invisible. There is the size of this 
country. The travel of the average American 
can lead to no adequate notion of this reahty. 
The eye takes in but a small part of the district 
where one lives. This continental land can be 
seen only through the telescope of imagination. 
When the western limit of Alaska lies in the 
glow of sunset, the eastern Hmit of Maine is 
burning in the fire of sunrise. Here is a 
Republic on which the sun never sets. One 
sees imagination at work representing the en- 
chanting physical greatness of our country, 
in such familiar anecdotes as these: An Ameri- 
can in England is afraid to go out after dark, 
lest he may fall off the Island into the sea. 
There is not enough water in the Thames and 
the Severn, the Tweed and the Clyde, to gargle 
one of the mouths of the Mississippi. The 
United States is bounded on the north by the 
Aurora BoreaUs, on the south by the Southern 
Cross, on the east by the Primeval Chaos, and 
on the west by the Day of Judgment. Size 
is always impressive. In the winter months, 
look, of a clear evening, at the star Sirius, the 
brightest splendor in the stellar universe. Read 
the calculated dimensions and brilliancy of this 
star made by astronomers, and with imagina- 
tion thus informed, allow this superlative wonder 
of the heavens to cast its spell over you. In 
this way you will come to understand the unique 
impressiveness of the physical magnitude of the 
Republic. When to this we add scenery un- 
surpassed, economic resources unequalled, the 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

possibility of homes and food for hundreds of 
miUions of prosperous and happy human be- 
ings, we have on the mere physical level of ex- 
istence a nation with a unique appeal to the 
imagination of its citizens. 

Let imagination paint another picture. Think 
what American intellect and energy have done, 
within one hundred years, for our people and 
for the world, in the development of the eco- 
nomic resources of the nation. It is a miracu- 
lous story, to be told only in the language of 
inspired dreams: ''The wilderness and the 
soUtary place shall be glad for them, and the 
desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." 
American inventions are in the service of the 
civihzed world. American science has an hon- 
orable place wherever science is known, and in 
one science at least, astronomy, America has 
for the last thirty years led the world. In 
apphed science our country is fast becoming 
the equal of the best ; our technical schools and 
state universities are putting, scientific intelli- 
gence in command of the economic resources 
and needs of our people. Education has be- 
come a passion among our youth, and the story 
of the wealth devoted to education in the last 
fifty years reads like a fairy tale. Religion 
here is a reality where it is anything. The 
saddest revelation of this war concerns Chris- 
tianity. In Europe among rulers and men 
of power it is little more than an academic 
interest, a sentimental memory. Among Prot- 
estants and Catholics alike, for the time at 
least, the glory is departed. Nowhere is there 
a great prophet of hope, a church with a mighty 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

forward look, a community of men swayed by 
moral faith in the universe, and in mankind. 
The backward look is great, the retrospect is an 
enchantment, yesterday illumines the world 
with its character and power; today is a day 
of darkness and tomorrow is midnight. The 
hope of the Catholic faith is here; the future 
of essential rehgion is here; the forward look 
is here, and it is great with high expectation. 

All these realities do not appeal with equal 
power to all our people; to many of our people 
the higher among these realities make no ap- 
peal. Yet as a grand totality, these reaHties 
make our country the wonder and splendor that 
it is in the imagination of all true citizens. 
Magnitude, wealth, beauty, intellect, — practical 
and scientific, — religion, whether in the ancient 
form of authority or in the freedom of this 
modern day, and the future, promising the 
richest reahzation for the highest dreams of a 
great people; here is our country, as it fives in 
the imagination of the milfions that love it. 

This Repubfic belongs to our people; it is 
theirs to enjoy, to defend, to heighten in worth, 
and to transmit to future generations. I be- 
Ueve that a new sense of ownership and obfiga- 
tion is almost sure to come out of the present 
crisis. America is ours to enjoy, ours to guard, 
ours to live for, ours if need be to die for; and 
if this shall be the mood of our people, a new 
America shall arise fairer still and yet more 
beloved. This is one of the reasons why I 
favor the universal military training of aU fit 
young men. It puts the nation into the imagi- 
nation of youth, as their nation; it lifts the 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

country before the eyes of our people as a 
glorious banner; it calls for service and hard- 
ship and trained manhood, and it gives in re- 
turn a new consciousness of the worth of the 
Republic. If you would love at your best, do 
something for that which you love. Parents 
love their children most when they have done 
their best for them; children love their parents 
most when they become their support and solace. 
The fountain of love is opened to the infinite 
depths only by unselfish service. The flag 
of the nation presented this day to this church, 
by members in our communion, who fought in 
the war for the preservation of the Union, in 
sacred memory of the men of four regiments, 
represents a love made mighty, and lasting as 
life, by sacrificial service. Ask our youth to 
dream dreams of the country that is theirs, to 
train to defend it, in all times of need, as part 
of their obligation, and the Republic will open 
new fountains of loyalty and enthusiastic de- 
votion in all hearts. Our ideal of education is 
of a nation universally trained for Hfe and all 
its essential interests, and thus maintaining 
through all changes its democratic character, 
a nation owned, loved, served and defended by 
the sovereign people. 

Can we doubt that such a nation will always 
command, in every day of crisis, the homage 
of its people.^ Can we doubt the loyalty to this 
beneficent Repubhc, if worse comes to worst, of 
any class of our citizens, EngHsh, Irish, Scottish, 
Scandinavian, French, Italian, German.^ My 
Pro-German Irish friend who sells newspapers 
at the Park Street entrance to the subway is 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

typical. His confession is this: "I am with the 
Germans till they attack this country; then 
I am agin them forever." The words of the 
great recruiting song of the Scottish National 
Poet, when Napoleon was planning his invasion 
of Britain, fittingly express, I believe, the pas- 
sion of our citizens, native and adopted, and 
adopted from all lands and races. Here is a 
single stanza of that song, with a few words 
changed to meet the present situation: 

''Does haughty [^Teut.'] invasion threat. 
Then let the loons beware, Sir! 
There 's [iVo/i] walls upon our seas 
And volunteers on shore, Sir! 
The Nith shall run to Corsincon, 
And Criffel sink in Solway, 
Ere we permit a foreign joe 
On [this great land~] to rally!'' 

Another stanza of the same song, confessing 
our own troubles and at the same time fiercely 
prohibiting outside interference in the settle- 
ment of them, may not be out of place : 

''The kettle o' the Kirk and State, 
Perhaps a clout may jail in H: 
But deil a joreign tinkler loon 
Shall ever ca' a nail int. 
Our jathers' blude the kettle bought, 
And wha would dare to spoil it ? 
By Heavens! the sacrilegious dog 
Shall juel be to boil it!'' 

For the only adequate philosophy of American 
loyalty we come now to my text. There are 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

among human beings wise love and unwise. 
Wise love appears with worth in the object of it, 
and saving benefit in the subject of it. Unwise 
love is made evident by two things, the absence 
of worth in the object of it, the absence of sav- 
ing benefit in the subject of it. CordeUa loves 
worth in her father, worth in her husband; her 
soul is saved by love. Romola, in George 
Eliot's great novel, loves Tito; hence her sorrow. 
Her greatest sorrow is that to save her soul 
she must cease to love the worthless object 
of it. 

This is the truth that rises into clearness, like 
the world in the light of morning, in the great 
words of Jesus: "For where thy treasure is 
there will thy heart be also." Love and treas- 
ure go together always. Where the treasure 
is only a fancy, a dream; where it is not a reality 
love must eventually die. Where the treasure 
is unimaginably great, there love goes from 
strength to strength, till both the treasure and 
the love find themselves eternally one in the 
heavenly world. 

Because the America that we behold and love 
has in it worth immeasurable, and because we 
who love America know the saving benefit 
that our love and our service bring, we are 
confident of our loyalty to our country in her 
day of crisis, our increasing attachment, our 
ever-deepening sense of gratitude, our devotion 
to the uttermost. We shall see to it that no 
weapon formed against her shall prosper; we 
pledge her our best endeavor and our highest 
prayer that in the immemorial mornings and 
evenings of coming l^me, she may appear an 

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AMERICAN LOYALTY 

ever greater nation, fairer in the light of ap- 
proaching and loveUer in the glow of receding 
day; and when at last we must bid her farewell, 
we shall leave her in the secret place of the 
Most High, and under the shadow of the 
Almighty. 



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